Voltaire: La Pucelle d'Orléans


Voltaire. 1694 - 1778

Voltaire's satirical poem about Jeanne d'Arc, first published in 1755, was an amusing burlesque containing a fair amount of licentious text. Not surprisingly, therefore, the plates are of a risqué nature.

"La Pucelle" became one of his most popular books: 17 illustrated editions were published in the 18th-century alone.

"The Pucelle" was Voltaire's ribald, versified history of Jeanne d'Arc: "my Jeanne" as he often called it, and at one the plague and pleasure of his life: "the epic he was fitted for," said Edward Fitzgerald, "poor in invention, I think, but wonderful for easy wit."

Begun in 1730, it soon became a source of danger: cantos, read aloud to a few delighted driends in the Cirey bathroom, mysteriously found their way into print.

In 1755 an incorrect edition was published in Paris, and was publicly burnt there and at Geneva, its printer being rewarded with nine years at the galleys. The author himself--though he often had occasion to allude to it as "that cursed 'Pucelle'"--never suffered anything worse than frights from it.


1762 la pucelle d'orleans

This beautifully preserved book is a 1st authorised edition.
Publisher: 1762 - None given. Illustrations: 20 fine engraved plates, unsigned, attributed to Gravelot.

Binding: Half leather over marbled paper covered boards. Spine with raised bands and ornate giltwork. Dimensions: 8" x 5" x 1 1/4"

Condition: bound in early 19th Century half calf, spine gilt with raised bands and green label, slightly rubbed, minor marginal waterstain to a couple of leaves, but a very good clean and attractive copy.

Though published anonymously, this edition was the first to be acknowledged by Voltaire, having been first printed in Louvain in 1755, 5 books only. The licentious nature of this burlesque on Jeanne d'Arc made it a notorious work in its day.







Voltaire. 1694 - 1778
Born in Paris under the name of Francois-Marie Arouet on November 21, 1694 of a middle-class Paris Notary. His early education was at the Jesuit school College Louis le Grand.  He began studying law at the request of his father, but turned away from the law and began writing. By the time he was 20 years old, he was exiled for writing lampoons against the Regency.

He returned the following year but was imprisoned in the Bastille for further libelous writings. During his stay, he adopted the pseudonym Voltaire.

In 1723, Voltaire finished La Henriade, which was a tribute to the rational and liberal Henri IV, which also happened to be taken as an open indictment of Christianity. The poem was banned, but it was still hailed as one of the greatest French language works written.

Voltaire was the victim of some injustice at the hands of a nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan, in 1726. The nobleman did not like some of Voltaire’s comments and had him roughed up. Voltaire was actually thrown into the Bastille again and was given the choice of either exile or imprisonment, and went to England as a result.

Voltaire wrote some of his impressions of the liberal English government in Letters Concerning the English Nation in which he praised their toleration. The French government became outraged because they felt Voltaire was insulting them. The French government banned this work too, and had it burned. Voltaire had to flee Paris again, and went to Lorraine, where he spent the next 15 years. During these years in Lorraine, Voltaire was very prolific as a writer.

In 1750, Voltaire went to Potsdam to serve Frederick the Great as a court poet and philosopher. He spent three years there, writing and antagonizing the king, and again left on poor terms. By this time, Voltaire was extremely rich, through speculation and bought a chateau in Geneva. It was at the chateau he named “Les Delices” that he wrote the work he is most famous for, Candide. The local government did not like his presence, so in 1759 he purchased a huge estate close to the French border called Ferney.

Voltaire could now afford to write and concentrate on his passion, attacking Christianity. He considered Christianity to be very detrimental, and wrote many treatises, books, poems, and plays to that effect. He also wrote what many consider to be his best work Philosophical Dictionary. This work, like many of his others, was publicly burned and banned in many areas.

Voltaire returned briefly to Paris in 1778, but due to the trip he died at the age of 84 on May 30. There were the usual unsubstantiated rumors that on his deathbed he recanted all his attacks on Christianity. Subsequently, he was denied a church burial, but his remains were eventually placed at the Pantheon in Paris.

Voltaire is considered by many to be one of the greatest Rationalists that ever lived. He fought continually against injustice and religious bigotry, and attacked Christianity because of the bigotry and injustices caused by the collusion between church and state. While he was never an atheist as was alleged, he was a Deist throughout his life.
From Voltaire's book The Philosophical Dictionary 1752
It is meet that the reader should be acquainted with the true history of Jeanne d'Arc surnamed "the Maid." The details of her adventure are very little known and may give readers pleasure; here they are.

Paul Jove says that the courage of the French was stimulated by this girl, and takes good care not to believe her inspired. Neither Robert, Gaguin, Paul Emile, Polydore Vergile, Genebrard, Philip of Bergamo, Papyre Masson, nor even Mariana, say that she was sent by God; and even though Mariana the Jesuit had said it, that would not deceive me.

Mezerai relates "that the prince of the celestial militia appeared to her." I am sorry for Mezerai, and I ask pardon of the prince of the celestial militia.

Most of our historians, who copy each other, suppose that the Maid uttered prophecies, and that her prophecies were accomplished. She is made to say that " she will drive the English out of the kingdom," and they were still there five years after her death.

She is said to have written a long letter to the King of England, and assuredly she could neither read nor write; such an educaticn was not given to an inn servant in the Barois; and the information laid against her states that she could not sign her name.

But, it is said, she found a rusted sword, the blade of which was engraved with five golden fleurs-de-lis; and this sword was hidden in the church of Sainte Catherine de Fierbois at Tours. There, certainly is a great miracle!

Poor Jeanne d'Arc having been captured by the English, despite her prophecies and her miracles, maintained first of all in her cross-examination that St. Catherine and St. Marguerite had honoured her with many revelations.

I am astonished that she never said anything of her talks with the prince of the celestial militia. These two saints apparently liked talking better than St. Michael: Her judges thought her a sorceress, she thought herself inspired.

One great proof that Charles VII.'s captains made use of the marvellous in order to encourage the soldiers, in the deplorable state to which France was reduced, is that Saintrailles had his shepherd, as the Comte de Dunois had his shepherdess. The shepherd made prophecies on one side, while the shepherdess made them on the other.

But unfortunately the Comte de Dunois' prophetess was captured at the siege of Compiegne by a bastard of Vendome, and Saintrailles' prophet was captured by Talbot. The gallant Talbot was far from having the shepherd burned. This Talbot was one of those true Englishmen who scorn superstition, and who have not the fanaticism for punishing fanatics.

This, it seems to me, is what the historians should have observed, and what they have neglected.

The Maid was taken to Jean de Luxembourg, Comte deLigny. She was shut up in the fortress of Beaulieu, then in that of Beaurevoir, and from there in that of Crotoy in Picardy.

First of all Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, who was of the King of England's party against his own legitimate king, claims the Maid as a sorceress arrested on the limits of his diocese. He wishes to judge her as a sorceress. He supported the right he claimed by a down- right lie. Jeanne had been captured on the territory of the bishopric of Noyon: and neither the Bishop of Beauvais, nor the Bishop of Noyon assuredly had the right of condemning anybody, and still less of committing to death a subject of the Duke of Lorraine, and a warrior in the pay of the King of France.

There was at that time (who would believe it?) a vicar- general of the Inquisition in France, by name Brother Martin. It was one of the most horrible effects of the total subversion of that unfortunate country. Brother Martin claimed the prisoner as smelling of heresy (odorantem haeresim). He called upon the Duke of Burgundy and the Comte de Ligny, " by the right of his office, and of the authority given to him by the Holy See, to deliver Jeanne to the Holy Inquisition."

The Sorbonne hastened to support Brother Martin, and wrote to the Duke of Burgundy and to Jean de Luxembourg -" You have used your noble power to apprehend this woman who calls herself the Maid, by means of whom the honour of God has been immeasurably offended, the faith exceedingly hurt, and the Church too greatly dishonoured; for by reason of her, idolatry, errors, bad doctrine, and other inestimable evils have ensued in this kingdom . . . but what this woman has done would be of small account, if did not ensue what is meet for satisfying the offence perpetrated by her against our gentle Creator and His faith, and the Holy Church with her other innumerable misdeeds . . . and it would be intolerable offence against the divine majesty if it happened that this woman were freed."

Finally, the Maid was awarded to Jean Cauchon whom people called the unworthy bishop, the unworthy Frenchman, and the unworthy man. Jean de Luxembourg sold the Maid to Cauchon and the English for ten thousand livres, and the Duke of Bedford paid them.

The Sorbonne, the bishop and Brother Martin, then presented a new petition to this Duke of Bedford, regent of France, "in honour of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for that the said Jeanne may be briefly put into the hands of the Church." Jeanne was led to Rouen. The archbishopric was vacant at that time, and the chapter permitted the Bishop of Beauvais to work in the town. (Besogner is the term which was used.) He chose as assessors nine doctors of the Sorbonne with thirty-five other assisiants, abbots or monks. The vicar of the Inquisition, Martin, presided with Cauchon; and as lie was only a vicar, he had but second place.

Jeanne underwent fourteen examinations; they are singular. She said that she saw St. Catherine and St. Marguerite at Poitiers. Doctor Beaupere asks her how she recognized the saints. She answers that it was by their way of bowing. Beaupere asks her if they are great chatterboxes. "Go look on the register," she says. Beaupere asks her if, when she saw St. Michael, he was naked. She answers: " Do you think our Lord had nothing to clothe him with? "

The curious will carefully observe here that Jeanne had long been directed with other religious women of the populace by a rogue named Richard, who performed miracles, and who taught these girls to perform them.

One day he gave communion three times in succession to Jeanne, in honour of the Trinity. It was then the custom in matters of importance and in times of great peril. The knights had three masses said, and communicated three times when they went to seek fortune or to fight in a duel. It is what has been observed on the part of the Chevalier Bayard.

The workers of miracles, Jeanne's companions, who were submissive to Richard, were named Pierrone and Catherine. Pierrone affirmed that she had seen that God appeared to her in human form as a friend to a friend. God was "clad in a long white robe, etc.''

Up to the present the ridiculous; here now is the horrible.

One of Jeanne's judges, doctor of theology and priest, by name Nicholas the Bird-Catcher, comes to confess her in prison. He abuses the sacrament to the point of hiding behind a piece of serge two priests who transcribed Jeanne d'Arc's confession.

Thus did the judges use sacrilege in order to be murderers. And an unfortunate idiot, who had had enough courage to render very great services to the king and the country, was condemned to be burned by fortyfour French priests who immolated her for the English faction.

It is sufficiently well-known how someone had the cunning and meanness to put a man's suit beside her to tempt her to wear this suit again, and with what absurd barbarism this transgression was claimed as a pretext for condemning her to the flames, as if in a warrior girl it was a crime worthy of the fire, to put on breeches instead of a skirt.

All this wrings the heart, and makes common sense shudder. One cannot conceive how we dare, after the countless horrors of which we have been guilty, call any nation by the name of barbarian.

Most of our historians, lovers of the so-called embellishments of history rather than of truth, say that Jeanne went fearlessly to the torture; but as the chronicles of the times bear witness, and as the historian Villaret admits, she received her sentence with cries and tears; a weakness pardonable in her sex, and perhaps in ours, and very compatible with the courage which this girl had displayed amid the dangers of war; for one can be fearless in battle, and sensitive on the scaffold.

I must add that many persons have believed without any examination that the Maid of Orleans was not burned at Rouen at all, although we have the official report of her execution.

They have been deceived by the account we still have of an adventuress who took the name of the " Maid," deceived Jeanne d'Arc's brothers, and under cover of this imposture, married in Lorraine a nobleman of the house of Armoise.

There were two other rogues who also passed themselves off as the " Maid of Orleans." All three claimed that Jeanne was not burned at all, and that another woman had been substituted for her. Such stories can be admitted only by those who want to be deceived.